


Holding Hands, We'll Fall

by Krystalicekitsu



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Hell, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Character Death, M/M, Rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-15
Updated: 2010-05-15
Packaged: 2017-10-19 01:24:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/195332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krystalicekitsu/pseuds/Krystalicekitsu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A hunt goes very, very badly for a certain bookish hunter- <i>Lightning singes his wingtips where they inadvertently brush against blood-soaked chains.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Holding Hands, We'll Fall

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of those fics you start and then three weeks later it's still sitting on your harddrive, not posted, and not finished. Not because you didn't have an ending (no, you had the _perfect_ ending) but because you forgot it/the computer ate it, and you're too pissed to sit down and put _something_ on the end to finish the damn thing off.

  


  
Gabriel gasps, rain water falling into his eyes, making him blink involuntarily. But it doesn’t matter, he can’t see the body in front of him anyway, “Sam! _Sam_!”

Frantic, he looks up to find his brother, Castiel. The angel, curled around his hunter protectively, shares a look with Gabriel.

He barely has a moment to growl, “Gabriel, don’t-,” before the archangel lets himself fall, lets himself _drop_.

Down, down, _down_ , until there’s no further to go. Until he’s reached the very bottom of his Father’s Creation. Lightning singes his wingtips where they inadvertently brush against blood-soaked chains.

The cries of the damned echoed oddly in Hell.

Pain, bright and bone deep, cuts through his wings, his being, lances through every step he takes. His grace is warring with the corruption around him, fighting it off. It’s painful, necessary and draining. He folds his wings, his grace, protectively around himself.

He manages to sneak his way through the outer gates, through the sixty-ninth guard post and just inside the thirtieth wall before he's discovered.

The battle is brutal.

The Winchesters had, in their short existence, managed to wipe out a good number of the higher demons, and there was only the snarling mass of lower, animalistic demons facing him behind the wall. They drop like flies under his blade, and not a one touches him.

Leaves the battle field littered in singed piles of pitch-black ash. Leaves with surety and continues on, pressing forward.

He's been in Hell fifty-five months.

His wings are singed and coated in ash, his grace is burning bright with fervor and he is losing his easy-going façade with every step. But he won't stop. He can't stop.

His blade falls with increasing surety, with swiftness and he is deaf to the cries of the damned.

There's only one he's looking for.

He finds Meg in his 288th week in Hell. He guts her and leaves her to heal before setting to her again.

" _Where is he?_ " his grace snaps out, taking a bit of her blackened and twisted soul.

She screams in burning agony, but doesn’t answer.

He asks again.

She taunts him.

He lashes out.

She snarls and howls, filling the air with curses.

Grace flares out behind him, lighting the world around them, and his very carefully executed control is the only thing that stops her from being vaporized with the rest of the demons for miles.

She writhes in agony.

He asks again.

He asks for weeks.

And a few more weeks.

She knows.

She knows and it would be a waste of his time trying to find another demon he could torture the information out of.

In the 391st week, Meg breaks.

She tells him everything- how to find him, how to get to him. Who'll be waiting for him when he finally does.

He leaves her there, broken and used, takes off towards his goal.

His grace is strained and his sword going dull with it. But he's still enough to crush the battalions that are guarding the sanctum. Still _more_ than enough to take apart the gate keepers and watch guards and out run the hellhounds. Enough to make it inside and onwards.

It's an old replica of a church, lines and corridors of stone arches behind thick and heavy wood doors.

They come off with a particularly forceful slash.

At three seconds after the start of the one hundred and eleventh month, Gabriel defeats the guards and breaks Samuel's battered soul free.

He wants nothing more than to sink to the scorched earth where he is and repair the soul he's hidden carefully in his grace but-

" _Hello brother_ ,"

His grace snarls and snaps as he turns around.

" _Remiel_ ," he sneers it into the air.

And the battle begins.

With his precious cargo Gabriel is twice as cautious, twice as calculated- but also twice as fierce and twice as fast.

He leaves Remiel screaming after him, clutching his shattered wing, and shredded grace and takes off up and up and up.

This high, the demons have a clear line of sight for him and he weaves and bobs, doges and ducks as chains materialize in his path, trying to clip him, to catch him, like a fly in a spider's web.

But he is fast and fierce and beautiful.

He is the messenger of God and there is none as fast as he.

One lucky shot snags one of his lesser wings and with a shriek he has seconds to decide to drop his sword, drop his stolen treasure or-

He screams, the sound lighting all of Hell and setting the rocks to ringing as he turns his sword on himself.

The wing is gone, left behind (far, far behind) in seconds.

When he bursts free from Hell it's been one hundred and eighteen months for him since he dropped, and he's trailing burning grace and angelic agony.

The wound from his sword is burning in fury and his scream shakes the mountains in the distance.

But the soul twined with his grace is safe and free, and Gabriel would give up a hundred of his wings- would cut them off himself- to keep this one safe.

He collapses to Earth, curling protectively around the tiny soul, and rests.

When he wakes, he'll look to fixing the sou- healing Sam. And then he'll tend to the boy's body, left lifeless for nearly two weeks.

 _Everything will be alright,_ he whispers soothingly to the soul quivering in his grace. _You'll see, everything will be fine._

 _I'm never letting you go again._


End file.
